Blaze of Embers

by Cam Baity

  Agitated, the Marquis flickered his opticle some more, pointed to Dollop, to himself, then to the hover disc, and gestured emphatically into the distance.

  “I’m not running away, not—not with you,” Dollop said. “Now g-give that back!”

  In a blur, Dollop rearranged his pieces, forming himself into a single grasping claw that darted at the Marquis. He almost managed to snatch his limb back, but the Marquis extended his telescoping arm and kept it just out of reach.

  Flash-flash-pop-blink!

  “Wh-what’s it to you anyway?” Dollop exclaimed. “If you ca-care so much, why’d you ab-b-bandon us in the Gauge Pit?”

  The Marquis’s opticle dimmed, and his shoulders sagged.

  “I—I’m not like you. I—I don’t leave my fr-friends. I’m going back there, a-and there’s nothing you can d-d-do about it.”

  The Marquis blinked a few times. He retracted his arm and handed the stolen limb back to Dollop, who grabbed it and stuck it in place. Opticle low and sputtering, the mopey Marquis returned to the hover disc and threw one last look over his shoulder. Dollop was scrabbling around the base of a shattered pipework tree, trying to grab a branch to pull himself up for a better view of the Depot.

  The Marquis’s opticle brightened.

  Dollop leapt, but he couldn’t grab the branch. Even when he lengthened his arms, it still lay just out of reach. The Marquis tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I already t-t-told you I—”

  The lumilow shook his head, laced his fingers together, and held them out like a step stool. Dollop looked at the Marquis with suspicion, but after a moment’s hesitation, he tentatively placed his foot into the lumie’s hands. The Marquis extended his telescoping legs and gave the little mehkan a boost up into the pipework tree.

  The lumie contorted his snaky body, twisting to extract himself from the clunky Watchman bomber gear. Then he dusted off his tattered Durall tuxedo, extended a bendy arm, and hauled himself up into the tree as well. He flickered a bright, cheery message, his many dewy lenses standing on end.

  Dollop stared at the Marquis in utter confusion.

  “Wh-why?” Dollop asked. “Wh-why are you here?”

  The Marquis adjusted his lapel proudly, then drew out a black disc from an inside pocket of his tailcoat. With a flourish and a pop, it expanded—a silk top hat. He was about to flip it onto his head when he sagged once more, his opticle dimming.

  The crown of the battered top hat was torn, flopping loosely like an opened tin can.

  Micah just couldn’t wrap his brain around it. An attack on Albright City? And hitting the Crest of Dawn, no less. Who would be so stupid?

  At the Foundry camp, the initial shock had been replaced with robotic efficiency. Despite the late hour, Goodwin was a powerhouse, charging around, giving orders, and taking care of business. The devastating news had thrown fuel on the fat man’s fire, and the others followed his passionate lead.

  Micah sat on a stack of metal crates, bundled up in his thermal foil blanket, with a Watchman soldier on either side. More than anything, he wanted to close his one good eye, but he knew sleep would never find him. Besides, workers were breaking down tents and packing up gear in preparation for departure. It looked like they would be leaving any minute now.

  He saw Gyrojets being loaded with Cyclewynders, including the one that held Phoebe and their gear. Sickly-blue light from inside the jet’s cargo hold made her look worse than dead, like some kind of wax sculpture. That wasn’t Phoebe.

  Micah turned away and stared into the ominous night. The starlight was bright and wavering, slowly shifting in patches across the lumpy peaks. These mountains looked like they were made from the same strange coral plants as the Vo-Pykarons, the range where they had saved those liodim—caused a stampede and taught the Foundry a good, hard lesson. Phoebe had been so fierce then, like nothing was gonna stand in her way. She was unstoppable. She was—

  He swallowed the knot in his throat, trying to think of anything but her. These peaks looked even bigger than the Vo-Pyks. They were called the Ephrian Mountains, if he remembered right. He wondered how high up they went, since the Shroud hung over them and hid the summits. Micah looked off far to the right. The bluish vegetation seemed to go on forever, up and up and…

  Was it just an effect from his swollen eye, or did the color change the higher up the mountain he looked? He rubbed his good eye—still there. It was far, but it was there.

  No, that was all just fairy-tale stuff. That sort of thing was never true. Couldn’t be true. It was stupid and impossible and insane.

  But…what if?

  Micah realized that work in the camp had stopped. Feeling warm all of a sudden, he shed the thermal blanket and found that his skin tingled in the night air. The hair rose on his exposed arms. There was a strange scent too. Not harsh and metallic like most of Mehk, but sweet and rich, almost like roses. Watchmen stood alert. Workers clustered together, all of them staring off to the left at something on the horizon.

  The Shroud was churning.

  Clouds formed. Not the scrap-metal clouds of bullet rain, but soft white ones, like cumulus clouds back home. They bubbled out from the wall of fog, growing and rising.

  And…glowing?

  And coming at them.

  The air was hot now, and Micah felt sweat beading on his forehead. There was pressure in his ears, a squeezing sensation that swallowed up the sound around him.

  “Get those jets up and running!” Goodwin screamed to the assembled Foundry workers. But his words sounded strangely muffled, like something shouted underwater. “I want—”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish.

  Clouds broke over them like a tidal wave. A hurricane of fire. Shrieks of terror.

  The camp was lifted into the air.

  Micah was sucked up into the violent wind. He scrabbled at the cracked ground, desperate for a handhold. The manacles on his hands snagged on an outcropping. He hung there, legs kicking at the cyclone. Tumbling debris whizzed past. A Watchman soldier pinwheeled toward Micah. Clipped him, knocked him loose.

  Screaming, Micah fell into the white rush. The hot gale deafened him. He slammed into something, crushed the wind from his lungs. It was a Gyrojet, groaning and rattling, about to be ripped apart by the freak storm. The fierce winds pressed him against the side of the aircraft. By wriggling his body, Micah managed to inch toward the shelter of the open cargo bay at its rear. He collapsed inside, amidst a tumult of heavy crates and Cyclewynders.

  The Gyrojet pitched. Micah was tossed against the wall. Equipment crashed all around. A Cyclewynder toppled and crunched onto its handlebars, striking its starter. The Cycle revved, its lethally sharp wheels spinning and coughing fumes as it did crazy doughnuts across the floor. It spiraled madly toward Micah.

  He crumpled into a ball. The Cycle blade slammed into the wall inches above his head, squealing and spewing sparks. The jet shook again. The blade slipped closer. Desperately, Micah thrust his hands up at the wheel, manacles first. He yelped as the sparks burned his wrists, bit into his cheeks. Despite the pain, he pushed harder, forcing the Cycle to saw through the cuffs. He heaved the vehicle, and it fell away. Micah scrambled clear, his digital manacles split in two.

  The Gyrojet trembled. Metal groaned. He could hear pieces of the aircraft being ripped away, felt the ceiling of the cargo bay crumpling. There, at the back of the hold, was the Cycle that held all his gear. Bound to its back and shrouded in shadow was Phoebe’s body. He knew what he had to do. Micah scrambled for the tethered Cyclewynder, hopped in the seat, and mashed the ignition button. Its wheels screeched and hacked into the metal floor.

  Hands appeared around the open cargo bay door. Someone climbing in, silhouetted by the white whirlwind, seeking shelter.

  Goodwin. The Foundry Chairman tumbled into the hold. His eyes met Micah’s.

  Another shriek of metal as the jet shuddered in the storm. Its nose tilted sharply downward. The open cargo bay pointed up at the
stars, the floor inclined like a ramp. Gravity tugged Micah backward. He wrenched the throttle, and the Cycle fishtailed in a shower of sparks. Micah maxed out the accelerator. The tether snapped. The Cycle jerked, stuttered, and raced upward, aiming right for Goodwin.

  The bastard who had killed Phoebe.

  The Chairman dove aside. Micah blasted out the back of the Gyrojet, cursing his near miss. He was held aloft for a moment by flickering hot winds that felt like they would sear the skin right off his body. Suspended, he hung on for dear life.

  The Cyclewynder crunched to the ground and shot forward. Micah wrangled the steering. Didn’t fall. He careened through the clouds, whipping around Watchmen, launching over obstacles.

  He burst out of the storm and into sudden, shocking stillness, almost as if a switch had been thrown. He took a choking breath, the air still heavy with that alien floral scent. The oppressive heat faded. He sped away, frantically fleeing.

  Micah knew where he was going. The fiery glow behind him lit the way as he headed toward what he had seen in the distant mountains. No matter how far-fetched it was, no matter how unlikely, he had to make for it.

  He had to try.

  Micah gunned the Cyclewynder across the open plain and away from the wreckage of the Foundry camp. He zoomed up into the gnarls of the overgrown Ephrian Mountains and risked a quick glance back.

  What he saw made him lose control. The Cyclewynder swerved, almost throwing him and Phoebe off.

  The clouds were gathering into a column of white fire. The tempest took shape, heaving flame and mist. Cyclone arms, tornado legs. A hulking thing. An impossible figure of impossible size. It rose and rose. The storm formed a jutting head that surveyed the scene. Stared with blazing, molten golden eyes.

  Micah clung to the Cyclewynder as he regained control, clung to what he thought he knew, sure and yet altogether unsure of what he had seen. The storm that had come from the Shroud. The storm that had struck the Foundry with heavenly fire.

  In slow motion, it—no, She raised a leg. Down it came.

  And the world trembled.

  “Drink,” snarled the grit-caked voice.

  A ladle of vesper was shoved into Mr. Pynch’s face. He opened his wide mouth to try and catch some of the viscous liquid, but most of it slopped down his layered chusk overcoat. He drank what he could before the overseer, a grizzled gohr with a crude piston where one of his legs should have been, moved on to the next slave. Mr. Pynch greedily lapped the spilled vesper off his lapel with a dry black tongue.

  He had no sense of what time it was, though he guessed it must be late. His hangover had worn off, leaving only a gnawing hollowness and the pain of the thump he had gotten on his quill-covered head. A few phases back, when he and the Marquis had double-crossed the detestable Tchiock in the seaside slums of Kholghit, Mr. Pynch had assumed he would never see the hiveling again. Yet Tchiock and his band of marauders had piped and sacked Mr. Pynch, and now he was a captive aboard their siege vessel, a submersible chamber attached to the head of a deep-sea wryl.

  The stout chains that bound him were forged from annealed tahnik, so there would be no chance of breaking them. The locks were bond knurlers, fist-sized sea critters with impervious clamps that only released when feeding, and their food source was held securely in a needlekey around the overseer’s neck.

  Mr. Pynch and the other wretches were bound to axles that spanned the width of the dank, corroded underdeck. For hours, they had turned those cranks, pumping fluid through the ducts and tubes that led to the grisly mess at the back of the vessel. It was a mind-control mechanism buried in the wryl’s exposed brain, allowing the mehkan behemoth to be controlled by the marauders.

  Tchiock and his crew had navigated the wryl through the flux, hunting down a shipping barge and spearing it from below with the monster’s mammoth tusks. Then the villains had emerged from their elevated command deck at the front to board their quarry, and now they were doing what they did best—killing and looting—while the slaves waited to resume their labor.

  The brief respite allowed Mr. Pynch to take stock of his misery. His arms ached, his back was raw from the overseer’s lash, and he was tired. So desperately tired. He couldn’t see out through the command deck, so it was impossible to know what was happening up above, but his sensitive nozzle lined with dozens of nostrils told him enough. The sickening scent of fear and death that drifted down was overwhelming. He hung his head and heaved a woeful sigh.

  Footfalls echoed, and marauders cackled as they descended into the underdeck with their spoils. Mr. Pynch rotated one of his roving eye sacs to see a group of captured volmerid sailors in chains, battered and smeared with ichor—more slaves to churn the axles. Mr. Pynch averted his gaze from Tchiock’s oozing face of blades and snouts.

  “Submerge!” the hiveling commanded. “Barges are out by the scores this cycle. We’ll take them, one by one.”

  His loathsome crew roared in approval.

  One of the new captives was tossed onto the bench beside Mr. Pynch. The vol’s gruff, knotted features were tensed up, and he was muttering a prayer of the Way.

  “Won’t help,” Mr. Pynch mumbled.

  The newcomer looked up. “You know not,” he growled.

  Mr. Pynch was too weak to argue.

  “There is word on the sea,” his neighbor said. “We was making for Ahm’ral to see for ourselves. You not heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  The overseer’s lash interrupted the slaves with a series of cracks. It slashed across the sailor’s back, but he barely winced. Quickly, Mr. Pynch grabbed the crank and began to turn it. The volmerid did the same, his one massively oversized arm doing the work of two mehkans.

  The vol looked back at Mr. Pynch, eyes glinting ferociously.

  “Pray and be saved,” he whispered. “She has come. Makina has risen.”

  Micah was shaking and not because of the freezing night. What he had seen was seared into his mind.

  Could it be? Was it really Her?

  Nothing made sense—first Goodwin killing Phoebe, then the attack on Albright City, now this? Everything was coming apart at the seams, and Micah felt like he was next to go. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. When Phoebe lost her dad, it hadn’t stopped her. She’d kept it all inside and did what needed to be done. He had to do the same.

  For her.

  On he rode, hurrying toward that spot he had seen in the distance, focused on one meager thread of…well, hope, he supposed. He knew this was idiotic and desperate, but it was all he had left to cling to. His icy hands cramped as he squeezed the throttle of the straining Cyclewynder. The vehicle’s headlamp jostled as its wheels skittered on hairpin turns, shredding the dense blue vegetation. Tubular growths grasped at the vehicle as he passed, and spiral strands tangled to block his way. It was as if the Ephrian Mountains had a mind of their own, just like the Vo-Pykarons.

  He slowed to navigate a narrow cut, maneuvering a snaky stretch that wound above a bottomless chasm. After rounding another bend, he was out of sight of the distant ruined camp. Now there was nothing but craggy black-and-blue slopes on every side, shifting in the patchy starlight. There was no path to follow, and no indication that this way had ever seen travelers. He was in uncharted mehkan wilderness. Any moment, he could wind up totally stuck, either on a slope too steep or trapped at a dead end with the vegetation closing off his escape.

  The thought made Micah urge the Cyclewynder on faster. But the higher into the mountains he rode, the tougher it got. The ground became steeper, and the undergrowth denser and more aggressive. Wisps of mist curled in the writhing vegetation. The air up here was getting thin. Micah was starting to feel short of breath.

  Was that the Cyclewynder engine hiccupping? Great—a new worry to add to his growing list. Micah looked around. Everywhere was more of the same. Maybe he had taken the wrong way up. If he had, how would he know? How long would he have to putter around up here before he found it—if he found it?

  What if he
was wrong? What if it had just been a trick of the starlight? What if he hadn’t seen anything up here at all? Well, then he was going to die alone, stranded on the top of a mehkan mountain in the middle of nowhere. No one would find his body. No one would ever know what had happened to him. Or Phoebe.

  And if he was right…well, then he might have chosen to race right into a fate much worse than death. It was a chance he had to take.

  The haze thickened. The vegetation stopped grasping. Branches broke off as he passed, crackling under the Cycle. The mehkan growths were dead, all dead.

  Then everything went wrong.

  He felt nauseated. Dizzy. Like he was trying to breathe through a straw. The air was thick with a taste of scorched iron. His vision was clouded. The world was fading behind milk glass. Then the Cyclewynder’s headlamp cut out—the engine choked and died. Micah staggered off the Cycle, disoriented and wheezing, half-blind in the fog.

  Fog! The Shroud—he couldn’t breathe in the Shroud!

  Desperation. He collapsed to his knees, fumbling blindly, numb fingers tearing at the cords that bound his gear to the Cycle. He freed his Foundry coveralls, pulled the mask over his face, and inhaled through the breathing apparatus.

  Air.

  Panic drained away, and his mind recovered.

  As soon as his heart stopped racing, Micah zipped into the coveralls. Phoebe was still wearing his old leather work boots, so he slipped on the oversized Durall pair she had been using. They dangled and flopped on his feet, but he would manage. As he tightened the straps on the coveralls, he heard a soft click, and the digital manacles fell from his wrists, their indicator light now dark. He looked at the Cycle, got a curious notion, and checked his Dervish rifle. It was dead too. Same with Phoebe’s Multi-Edge.

  The Shroud must have killed all the electronics, he realized grimly. Good thing the Foundry made their breathing masks without any Computator chips.

  He stood and took in his surroundings, only able to see a few yards in any direction—beyond that, everything faded to featureless murk. The quiet was absolute. He was on his own with only the Shroud-strangled starlight to lead the way. Micah studied the gray haze and noticed that it wasn’t regular fog. It was made of tiny grains of ore, metal powder so fine that it drifted weightless on the air. He wondered how much of it had gotten into his lungs before he put the breathing mask on.